The present invention relates to a machine for filling and closing bags of a synthetic plastic material, preferably lateral fold bags or flat bags.
Machines of the above-mentioned general type are known in the art. A known machine has lowerable filling pipes and an intermittently moveable transport band for the filled bags, wherein two carriages are arranged in the space between the filling pipes and the transporting band at a distance corresponding to the bag width and moveable synchronously with the transporting band parallel to its longitudinal direction. Such a machine is disclosed, for example, in a German patent application No. P 30 06 129.1-27. The carriage pair is provided with several gripper pairs and performs, in addition to a horizontal movement, a pivoting movement about a horizontal axis so as to separate the bag mouth edge by the gripper pair from the filling pipes and move in the region of the welding station into the space between the welding members. The known machines possess some disadvantages in the sense of their efficiency and space they occupy.